


Where It Is Always Evening

by unreadlibrary



Series: Where Lion Lies Down With Wolf [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nothing explicit, One-Shot, Romance, Tyrion is King, delayed wedding night, for characterization reasons, just a touch flowery, mention of Sansa's TV trauma, mentions deaths of beloved characters, not S8-compliant but kinda based on season 8, or more than a touch, poetry by Giuseppe Ungaretti agh my heart, slice-of-life with the world’s shortest political subplot, slowish burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:21:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23099245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unreadlibrary/pseuds/unreadlibrary
Summary: "Let’s pretend our story is a happy one. Let’s pretend we are a husband and wife who are in love."
Relationships: Tyrion Lannister/Sansa Stark
Series: Where Lion Lies Down With Wolf [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660264
Comments: 14
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Been sitting on this for a minute (mostly because I wasn't sure how to tastefully write the last chapter-hahaHA) but so happy to have another Sansa/Tyrion out there. I love this couple to pieces. 
> 
> Fair Warning: I'm obsessed with the myriad of endings possible for GOT/ASOIAF, and am definetly in the camp that S8's ending was not the ideal. But this work kinda borrows elements from both TV! and Book!Tyrion. I think I did a better job of explaining stuff in this story than I did in others, but if anything's confusing, just imagine this is the TV version of Sansa and Tyrion but one where Tyrion became King and Jon wasn't banished and Bran has the possibility of becoming more human. And honestly, you don't even have to imagine that. The worldbuilding is second to the relationship between Tyrion and Sansa in this one.

* * *

_Generations later, they would start the story of the War for the Dawn like this:_

_Do you know why the middle of the North is lost? Why they call it the White Desert, and why north of the Fallen Wall they call it the Night Lands? From the Fallen Wall through Karhold and White Harbor, the roots of winter have taken hold. When the Night King fell, wherever a wight or White Walker fell with him, there the land became a frozen desert. Summer will never visit those places again._

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

The battle for the dawn had cost the North too much. The wastes. Daenerys Stormborn. Theon. Brienne of Tarth, holding the remains of Jaime Lannister. The age of dragons. Countless dreams, even the dream of spring.

The castle of Winterfell, too, was a casualty of war. They built the new castle at the edges of Deepwood Motte. Bran’s memory of Brandon the Builder helped. They did not attempt to build a replica of Winterfell. That would have been too painful, like living in a lie. At least that’s how Sansa felt about it. But it was Bran that was now Lord of—well, what would they call this place now? They had their independent North, they had their dawn, but at such a price. 

Sansa counted on what she did have. Summer and siblings, power and her people. 

Tyrion, inexplicably. Tyrion, who had pledged so much of the Lannister wealth for the restoration of the North. That same wealth which had been used to bleed her family all throughout the War of the Five Kings. Tyrion Lannister could do that. He could spin every wrong done in the name of his father and make it sweet retribution. 

When the castle was nearly done, Tyrion came for the celebration. It was at this time that he learned of Jon’s abdication. There was quite a lot of yelling that night. Sansa for her part was too weary to argue with Jon Snow. She could only look around her, at the fine sparse sturdy halls, everything so Northern, so safe, so full of promise, and think—but this is not my home. 

—

  
In the end it was Tyrion—Tyrion Lannister the Imp—who became King. 

— 

Before she left the North, Sansa told Jon to make the most of his second chance at life. 

“The age of dragons is over,” she told him, “But you are still a king,”

“I don’t want it,”

No, they weren’t about to have this conversation all over again. 

“Not the Seven Kingdoms,” Sansa said, “Be the King in the North again,”

“But Bran—”

“—will one day remember that he is Brandon Stark. But even when that day comes…you are most like father, Jon. And I won’t have you living in a self-imposed exile. You will be King in the North. We can find you a wife, and you can have children and carry on the Stark name where Bran and Arya and I cannot,”

“Sansa—”

“You are my home. Arya is my home. And Bran. The North is in me. They could not take it from me when they killed Lady. They could not take it from me in King’s Landing. I am a wolf, and so are you. But it is my turn to wander away from here, and for you to stay. You did not take this from me, Jon Snow, I gave it away. This is my choice.”

So when she looked south, she was not lonely. In her life, she had always moved in a slow and steady pace. She had always known she would be a queen. 


	3. Chapter 3

She does not remember much about her third wedding, but it is the best of them. Not nearly as elaborate as the first two; post-war coffers were never very generous. But the people needed an excuse to celebrate. They held it at Lannisport and spread the news to every corner of the realm. 

And she does not say it, but Casterly Rock is so startlingly like the castles she had dreamed of as a little girl that she is, at first, speechless on arrival. She can tell Tyrion is nervous, that he thinks their friendship—with its history of delicacy—was fraying at the edges already. She wanted to assure him that he’d done nothing wrong. That, contrary to what he must think, she had married him for more than the relative ease of the match.   
  
He did not sleep with her that first night, perhaps out of habit. 

The following night he kissed her brow and fell asleep beside her, or so she thought, but when she wakes up he has made a space for himself on the divan. 

On the third night, she put a stop to it. 

“Tyrion,” she said. What would she say? That she wants this? Her mother had never taught her anything; as far she knew, this was so celebrated because it brought children into the world and houses together. But that did not fully explain why her mother and father had always slept in the same bed—not when she knew other lords and ladies, her old friend Jeyne’s parents, for instance, did not. And as Sansa grew older, she then surmised that the act was merely pleasurable for men. But then she had overheard Lady Olenna and Margaery Tyrell say things that would point out flaws in that theory. And despite everything, Sansa would still blush when she thought of her Aunt Lysa’s wedding night.  
  
There was Sansa’s own dream, for instance—a kiss. 

And, though she was always attempting not to feel it or recall it or pay it any mind, she wanted to stop feeling her second husband inside her. She wanted, instead—to be occupied, to be tender, or warm, or relaxed, or—held, mostly. 

“I don’t know how,” Sansa managed, “But I want to. I’d like to. I think we should,”

He stood there, dressed in gold. He had shaved his beard, out of the necessities of summer or as a symbol of his returning from exile—Sansa was not sure. But he looked so much like he had on their first wedding night. She had not realized he was handsome then. Perhaps he wasn’t—couldn’t have been for the girl Sansa was at the time. Now there were other things between them. Sansa thought of the kiss they had shared in the crypts of Winterfell. 

“Sansa,” The way he said her name filled her lungs with air. When was the last time she had really anticipated something? 

“Did you think I married you to have a childless marriage?” Sansa asked. 

He chuckled, “My lady, I will do my duty by you. But—it’s not that you are young, but you are, and I have never been with—but you see, you’ve been…. It might hurt, and if you aren’t as ready as you think, then it should be done slowly,”

“I would like to know what it’s like,” Sansa said, forcing herself to look Tyrion in the eye, “What makes a woman want to share her bed with a man every night,”

She felt over-warm all of the sudden and then remembered this was what wine was for. Her hand shook as she poured it, another embarrassment, and then she turned back to Tyrion and saw the expression on his face.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt like such a child. 

Tyrion poured himself some wine as well. He motioned for her to sit on the edge of the bed and he joined her. 

“Well, it all begins with good conversation,” He said, grinning and holding up his wine. Sansa shot him an eyebrow, but lifted her goblet as well. They drank. 

She thought of him growing up here, hiding in hallways, tripping in the gardens, swimming in the ocean. It was so easy to picture his youth.

When she woke up the following morning she only had a slight headache from a touch too much wine, but Tyrion had stayed in her bed. Small victory, that. Sansa vaguely remembered how he had helped her lie down and they had fallen asleep nose-to-nose. This thoughtful gesture, from the man who had strangled his lover and killed his father, who had given the order that had ended his sister’s life, shortly after betraying a woman—that force, that legend, that heartbreaking Targaryen—to whom he had sworn love and loyalty to. Even now people said Tyrion had only won the kingship by making a deal with some devil. 

Who was this man who had kept vigil over her chastity, who was even now asleep like a child in her bed? The tenderness she felt didn’t make sense. She brushed the hair back from his face and saw the price for all his scheming: the scar that ran across his face, joined by a missing bit of nose and ear. Fool of a man, always insisting on joining battles he couldn’t win. How was it that he was all these things: usurper and rightful king, knight of flowers and lecherous snake, ugly cripple and handsome rogue, the last man she ever wanted and the only man she’ll ever choose?


	4. Chapter 4

A fortnight passed, and Sansa became used to the castle. Tyrion showed her the places she was likely to have missed during the nervous tour the servants had given her. There were hiding places, magic mirrors, doors in the walls, a curiosity in one of the older arches where if you whispered in one corner it sounded like you were shouting in the other—and a haunted turret. 

“But this place isn’t nearly as ancient as Winterfell,” Tyrion said, “Who knows what ghosts guarded those halls?” 

He said this when they approached the place where his mother, Joanna, had been buried. The inscription, the engravings—there was a touch of tenderness on the white stone. It startled Sansa that Tywin Lannister had, indeed, been a man as capable of love as her father had been. 

Tyrion asked after Sansa’s opinion on what could be improved at Casterly Rock. He’d like to see some of it shaped to her liking. 

“Climbing plants,” she said, noticing the clean white sharpness of everything at the Rock, “To soften the edges. And flowers—but, they mustn’t be hedged in. And—”’

They talked a long while on her theory of architecture. 

At the back of her mind, Sansa knew that even as she was falling in love with Casterly Rock, even as she was getting used to the rhythms of this phantom marriage, that there was a reason for Tyrion’s special attention. She could not join him at the Council’s Seat—she would run things from Casterly Rock and deal directly with the North in her husband’s prolonged absences. All of this was to prepare them both for the after-honeymoon. Even with the War of the Centuries behind them, the world needed mending on a daily basis, and there were bigger things to worry about than hanging plants and marital bliss. That is what Sansa told herself. Very soon, and for a very long while, Tyrion would be heading south. 

King’s Landing, sacked by fire, no longer existed. For a brief time after the War for the Dawn, the powers-that-be had considered Lannisport for the capitol, but it wasn’t central enough, and stank too much of Tywin and Cersei. So, settling on High Garden almost seemed obvious, in retrospect. No proper Tyrell to claim it, relatively neutral, a stunning view. But it was far from the North. It was far from Casterly Rock. Sansa thought she would enjoy the freedom to do as she pleased, the aloneness that, as she’d grown older, she’d come to need more and more. 

But every night Tyrion slept in her bed and did not touch her. She’d thought it more than once: this was a phantom marriage. There was a polite distance and a childish barrier and so much history between her and her husband. She’d broken his heart before; they both had blood on their hands. Why did she torture herself, thinking she could still have a marriage like her mother and father?

—

Even so, Tyrion announced that he’d planned an entire day that would be for just the two of them. Small comforts. They could perhaps at least learn to be friends again. 

—

They began the day bright and early. There were no traitors and sycophants to weed out, no mild politicking, no economic crises. Or, if there were any that day, they could wait. 

They took a short boat ride to an island directly off the coast, just within sight of Casterly Rock. It was small, dormant volcano, Tyrion told her. But what made this island special was its music. 

He had instructed the servants to dress Sansa in clothes that were easy to climb in, so her skirts had been thinned out and hitched, and once they reached the shore she changed into an old pair of muddy boots that Tyrion himself had brought for her. It was strange—she knew they must have been Cersei’s, once. Cersei used to brag about her tomboyish outings, back before, in Cersei’s words, she had grown “odious breasts,” and Sansa thinks perhaps these were her riding boots. A ghostly sensation passed over Sansa as she pulled them on, but she quickly dismissed it. 

She soon found out the reason why the servants had called this island Clinkstone. 

Tyrion had scrambled ahead, with an almost childlike zeal, toward a patch of rock near the well-worn path. He turned back to make sure she was watching and then began climbing the rock face. As slivers of dust and pebbles slid under his feet, it sounded like the gongs of several tiny bells were being rung and silenced, clink-clank, clink-clank, over and over. Tyrion, grinning, reached the top and picked up a palm-sized, sun-warmed stone, handing it to Sansa. 

“Go on, tap us a tune,” he said. 

She hesitantly touched rock to rock. There: a nice solid ring. Sansa felt her face relax. She hit the rock a little harder this time. Each time she hit it, a pleasant resonance passed between her and the earth. Chink-chink-chink. 

They continued up, the goal being to have an early lunch at the highest point of the island. As the stones slid away under their feet, singing, Sansa felt momentarily alive.

— 

Perhaps it was the wine (she was getting more used to the Westerland varieties), or the homely comfort of the rosemary bread, but Sansa and Tyrion were soon discussing things that, once, even as soon as the week before, would have been impossible to discuss between the two of them. 

“If I had married Loras,” Sansa was saying, watching the light on the sea instead of the look in Tyrion’s eyes, “I would have been miserable. In quite a safe way, yes. But then, perhaps, I would have died with the Tyrell’s, having never seen my family or the North again. Death from another of Cersei’s betrayals,” 

She shook her head, took a sip of wine. She’d never been very good at holding liquor, and she knew the buzz was a little too strong for her, so she made a show of watering it down with the thin skein they’d brought. But she needed a bit of false courage to say what was on her mind. 

“No,” Sansa shook her head, still refusing to look at her husband as she confessed, “If there is one thing I am proud of, Tyrion, it’s outliving your sister,”

Tyrion swallowed loudly. 

“I’m—” Sansa’s eyes widened, “I’m almost sorry for saying that, but—”

“No,” Tyrion waved her concern away and then threaded the same hand in a motion that captured her own. He kissed her ring. 

“There was a name between Cersei and I,” said Tyrion, “And whatever was built and then destroyed between us, at the end of it all, the name was all that remained,”

“Tyrion Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, King of the…what do we call it now?”

Tyrion laughed; the sensation it passed through her was even more pleasant than the sounding stones. 

“That’s a question I’m putting to the Council,” Tyrion said, “There is talk of splitting the area around Highgarden into a separate territory, so that at least on paper we can say I still rule seven territories. A terribly religious conviction, but there’s some political sense to it—”

He seemed to sense that if he continued on that track of conversation, they’d end up talking about politics all day. He let go of her arm, smiling without a hint of teeth, which almost made him look reluctant, or perhaps even sad. Tyrion made up for this by patting her arm affectionately, but Sansa didn’t like it. It seemed too patronly. 

She looked at the ocean again. She was still half-convinced of Old Nan’s stories: that there were no horizons, just parts of the world that the old gods hadn’t painted yet. She’d once asked Old Nan how she could explain all the trinkets and ravens and letters that came from beyond their own borders, and Old Nan had replied, “The gods never stop creating, sweetling,” 

“I suppose we’re looking at what’s west of Westeros,” Sansa mused. 

“You know, I used to think about that whenever Jaime and I came here,” Tyrion said. He stood up, “I’ve half a mind to send an expedition, but there’s the small matter of old King Bobby’s debts,”

Was it Sansa’s imagination, again, trying to convince her that there was something heavy about Tyrion—something weighing him down? Well, a crown, for one. But Tyrion was made for wearing crowns. When he looked at the ocean he looked more at peace than at any other time Sansa had known him. The Lannister eyes were a staunchly traditional green, but Tyrion’s had been born with some disloyalty: one eye reflected green like wildfire, the other dark cold like Blackwater Bay. 

Sansa found her voice, “Where would you go, if you had the choice?” 

“Why, nowhere,” Tyrion turned, blinking, then paused for thought, “Or, perhaps—Asshai,”

“Asshai-by-the-Shadow…why, we have our own Night Lands now,” Sansa said, wincing at the memory of the North, “You needn’t go so far,” 

“True,” Tyrion said, choosing, it seemed, to entertain the lighter implications of their conversation, “But the books that come out of Asshai—some damn fine poetry, I’ll admit. They say it’s a place where it’s always evening,”

“I shall have to visit your solar and peruse these books,” Sansa said. Ah, that mode of speech was so ingrained in her, but she hated how distant and cool it made her sound.

“Yes,” Tyrion replied. It felt like he had caught some of the coolness. Not even sure why she was saying it, she suddenly announced:

“I should come tonight,” 

Sansa caught the movement out the corner of her eye. Tyrion actually shivered. Curious. 

—

  
Tyrion had planned the end of that day with a feast. A magnificent feast. Even more magnificent than either of their wedding feasts, perhaps because the Lord of the estate was leaving and they wouldn’t need nearly this much food over the coming months; it seemed the pantries had been cleared to their minimum necessities and this was the chef’s last hoorah. It was a menu prepared with the husband and wife in mind and not the latest popular dishes made more for impressing foreign constables than for general consumption. There were no dishes shaped like birds or jewels here, but dishes that reminded both Tyrion and Sansa of their childhoods. 

Sansa was surprised, for one, to find Northern honeyed chicken. She still felt a twinge of homesickness upon tasting it—the honey from Northern flowers was different than honey from coastal ones. And coastal foods dominated the table: seafood cakes heavy with crab meat and whole tender bites of mussel, oysters split apart in shells, a heavy cream stock thick with clams and carrots, boiled salmon with horseradish, a trout baked in clay. Plates of salad were passed around too; lighter soups of melon and mint; the last of summer’s fiddlehead ferns had been procured, and elderflower fritters with tangy cream inside, then pears poached in wine, strawberries and sweetgrass, and, of course, lemon cakes. These came with fresh sprigs of lavender, and Sansa’s eyes watered both from their tartness and from the wash of good feeling it brought over her. 

But it was all ruined by the chestnut soup. 

Specifically, it was the duck breast floating in the bisque. Normally smoked, Sansa noticed the charred striations on the meat first, and then the smell pulled her in. 

It was served in the third course, with the blandissory and the mint things. Sansa had just dusted off a lemon cake; the desserts had been passed around freely, and she now felt too satisfied to take the offered chestnut soup. Was it because the soup reminded her of too many forced dinners with Cersei Lannister? 

No, Sansa knew this was not the case. She grabbed the wrist of the servant with the soup, and some of it spilled on Sansa’s gown. The servant blanched. Sansa could feel the pull of Tyrion’s gaze in their direction. 

“What is it, my Lady?” 

Sansa nodded for the servant to set the soup down. She sniffed the soup, speared a piece of meat and pulled it apart on one of the cloth napkins. 

“The meat is usually smoked,” she said quietly. Inwardly, she was grateful that the assassin had been so arrogant as to assume they would mistake smears of poison for the result of grilling the meat. 

She whispered the name of the poison and the servant did her best not to faint. Sansa grabbed her arm unthinkingly to support her; Sansa needed the support herself. 

“I hate that I know that,” she said to her husband, near breathlessly, “I know because of Lord Baelish,”

“I see,” said Tyrion, very calmly. 

And he had the whole thing straightened out in an hour; the poison tested on a gouty cat and found effective, the table cleared, the castle scoured, a few possible culprits sniffed out, whipped, made to tell two truths and a lie, and finally a confession. It was not a terribly knotty mystery; Sansa closed her ears to the whispers. There would be more of this to come and she was just going to get used to it. 

—

“Sansa,” Tyrion had found her in his chambers—-more accurately, the solar leading to them. She was looking at a book without reading it. 

Tyrion stalled, worrying one hand inside the other’s palm. Then he seemed to muster a spring in his step.

“Now I get to enjoy a hanging tomorrow,” he said, rolling his eyes and smirking. Sansa was quiet. She stirred slightly, but, too late, her prolonged silence had demoralized him. She could see his small smile disappear, his attempt to lighten the mood ignored. Why? Why did she find it so hard to speak, to express anything, some bubble of hilarity, even a small smile? She was in knots. She needn’t be. She was stronger than this. 

“It really was a lovely day,” she said. She put the book aside and stood up to warm her hands by the fire. “Don’t think it ruined. It won’t be the first time something like that is tried and fails.”

Tyrion joined her at the hearth. His voice was low and hoarse, “No wife of mine should feel afraid in her own home.”

And those words did more for her hands than the suddenly dull fire could do. Ah. No. 

What she was about to do next was simply a queenly duty. Because she wouldn’t be afraid anymore, of men or power or sex. No, she could get pleasure and duty mixed together, but she didn’t have to be a fool-hearted girl about it. Now she understood her haughtiness. She still needed some kind of armor; it was her heart that had gotten her into trouble, when she was nothing but a babe in King’s Landing. She couldn’t shuck her armor so easily now; she just needed to soften the right edges of her personality so that her husband was comfortable sharing her bed. More than sharing it. They’d done that for two weeks now and she still could not call this a legitimate marriage. 

“Tyrion,” she said, feeling her resolve warm her further, “I am not afraid. You are my husband.” 

Hold his gaze. Hold it. She could practically hear Margaery Tyrell and Lord Baelish’s voices as one: to seduce a man, look him in the eye. 

And Tyrion didn’t look away either. Sansa was aware of every small sound outside the room, then inside the room, then it seemed like all she heard was her breathing and his. Tyrion took a step forward. He looked like a man coming undone but also pulling himself together. Only his thumb shook, every so slightly, when he took her hand and kissed it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost forgot to mention: polyphonic stone is an actual phenomenon. The island that Tyrion and Sansa visit has this type of stone. It makes a ringing sound when tapped.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wedding Night. Not explicit, and I don't see anything wrong with talking about any aspect of a relationship between a husband and wife, but there's yer Archive Warning.

Nothing could have prepared her for it. The fear she felt, even in willing nakedness, was incomparable to the animal fear she’d been subjected to before. This was an entirely new vulnerability and she had no anger or numbness to hide within. Well, there was her pride, but she hadn’t realized how much her pride was bound up in her clothes. Tyrion had only helped her out of the outermost layers, but by the time they’d gotten to her shift she had a terrible time with the shaking and she told Tyrion it was only because it was cold. He’d gone to stoke the fire. She was lying on his bed, feeling as absurd as a bearskin rug. Once glorious, now divested. The only way to guard herself was to look as stony as possible. 

“Sansa,” Tyrion had returned. His bed, made to his standards, was lower to the ground, so he could actually stand beside her and look down into her face. 

“I’m not afraid.” She repeated to the canopy above them. 

“I’ll be—. It won’t be like—”

“We don’t have to talk about what happened.” She said. Every tense of her muscles was on display. It was so unbearably bright. “What happened—it won’t keep happening. I refuse to keep reliving it.”

She shivered. With a quick motion Tyrion grabbed one of the blankets gathered at the end of the bed and threw it over her. She didn’t protest. Instead—

“Can we? Make it dark?” 

A moment’s hesitation. Then, quietly, “Yes.”

It was still too cold to put out the newly stoked fire, but she heard Tyrion rearrange the guard around it and blow out the candles. He pulled the curtain on the one large window and by then she had relaxed somewhat. She heard Tyrion slowly walk around the bed, pulling the canopy there too, his trousers and belt discarded. His weight dipped in on the other side. It wasn’t a terribly large bed. If they lined up now to go to sleep their shoulders would always touch. 

Tyrion was still clothed in a shirt that, due to his size, also served as a shift. The brush of the fabric was strangely comforting.

“Do you want me to remove your shift, or do you want to do it?” he asked her. Now that it was darker, Sansa felt capable of movement. The thought of somebody else pulling away her last bit of protection filled her with an old terror, so she sat up and silently removed the shift herself. 

She knew he was studying her outline with an intensity he had never used on her before. Again, she was grateful for the dimness. She looked forward, telling herself she’d look at him any moment, but her gaze remained glued to the edge of the bed. 

“I think I’ll keep mine on, if that’s alright,” His laugh is deep, chesty, nervous. His voice had always sounded so much larger; well, it was as large as his personality. 

“That’s no fair,” Sansa smirked. Her heart began beating like a bird’s—she’d just invited him to be naked? Did she event want that?

But he didn’t make any movement to remove the rest of his clothing. Instead, he propped several pillows up behind her and instructed her to lean back and be comfortable. Her heart was hammering. She suppressed another shudder when his hand brushed her shoulder. 

“Sansa—”

“I want this—but—” she licked her lips, “—say something, anything, talk, it makes it easier,”

“That I can do,” He laughed again. He was nervous too. 

At first nothing came to mind. They couldn’t fall back on something trivial, like weather, not after almost being poisoned that afternoon, not after agreeing to make this marriage a real thing. Did this, this act, always have to have so much weight behind it? 

“Well—” Tyrion began.

“When I was a girl—” Sansa began, desperately, “I thought weddings were magical. I knew that marriages happened for political reasons. But I never had any doubt that I’d marry for love. I never had any doubt that weddings nights were mysterious and magical and that the only thing two people had to do to have a baby was to pray to the gods and lay naked under the sheets,”

“That was it?” Tyrion asked, keeping his expression neutral. 

“That’s what I thought,” Sansa said, then turned her head to the side, “You know, we tell lies to children, but I don’t see the point. It’s not much of a kindness in the end,”

Tyrion shifted slightly. “Well,”

“Hm?”

“Gods, I’m the last person who should be saying this—” Tyrion began, shifted again, “But not all the stories are lies. No, that’s the wrong word. I don’t think any of the stories are lies. They’re the most true things. That’s why they hurt. It’s our lives that are lies. Our hearts that are liars,”

He trailed off.

“No,” Sansa said, “Continue. Let’s pretend tonight. Let’s pretend our story is a happy one. Let’s pretend we are a husband a wife who are in love,”

Tyrion took her hand. His hands felt larger now, because they were so warm and her fingers were so cold. 

“I just read something interesting,” he said after a moment's consideration, rubbing circles over her knuckles, “Do you like poetry?”

“Mm-hm,” Despite the hitch in her throat, Tyrion did not stop touching her. She was relieved. They needed to keep going. She barely noticed when the circles on her knuckles had become arcs up and down her bare arm. 

“Poetry from Asshai,” Tyrion smirked, “Singular stuff. Sorry if it comes off awkward—consider it chatter, something you can mind more than—”

He didn’t finish his sentence. Even though his words were self-deprecating, his touch felt so sure and confident. Sansa was mortified when she shivered; more mortified that the shivering felt so good. 

“Come wife, let me seduce you with another man’s words!” Tyrion laughed.

But then, his voice was so very low and so very close.

  
_The air is soft and you perhaps now pass_   
_Nearby, saying: “This sun and so much space_   
_Will calm you._

Tyrion had a gift for rhetoric. His rhythm was fine, his enunciation crisp, and his voice felt even deeper now that she could feel it vibrating through his chest.

_In the pure wind you can hear_   
_The tread of time and of my voice._

He kissed her shoulder, spoke again with his lips hovering over her collarbone. 

_I have_   
_Within me gathered slow by slow, in me_   
_Enclosed the muted thrusting of your hope._   
_I am for you the dawn and day intact.”_

And now he pulled back. Sansa’s eyes shot open in the dark, expecting something blinding. 

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Tyrion asked, all nearness dropped from his voice. 

Sansa, recovering, replied, “Pretty strange,” 

“There was more by him,”

“Was there?” 

“Mm,”

“You could recite more, if you want,”

“Does it help, my lady?”

“Sansa, Tyrion, say Sansa. Remember—this is a story. It’s got to be convincing. And yes, its fine. It fits the mood,”

In the silence she felt herself being summed up. His hands started playing up and down her arms again.

_Along a shore where it was always evening,_

His hands slid across her belly, and oh, this felt like actual nakedness. Shoulders and hands were one thing, but this, this soft long expanse that she normally kept hidden, that even now spun with some kind of more deeply hidden emotion—she heard a sharp sigh escape through Tyrion’s teeth as he grazed her skin over and over again. Sansa was flattered, which took some of the edge off. 

_Where woods were ancient and entranced, he landed,_

Her hip bone. Her upper waist. Her ribcage. 

_And advanced_

Tyrion would not advance. And Sansa finally had to stop concentrating on everything but this very thing he would not do. She knew, and he knew, that once he touched her breasts, then they would be halfway through to making this a deal for keeps. She didn’t want to have to force him, but she knew this is what had to happen. And her body even seemed to want it. Tyrion simply kept retracing the circuits he’d been making, lulling Sansa further and further into whatever was the opposite of sleep. All the while, his voice floating above her:

_And the sound of wings called him back,_   
_Sound unfettered from the shrill_   
_Heartbeat of the torrid water,_   
_And he saw a phantom_   
_(Fading then reflowering);_   
_As he climbed on again, he saw_

Sansa found herself at a loss—what? What had he seen?

_It was a nymph asleep,_   
_Erect and clinging to an elm._

Ah! His hands felt large and warm as they finally touched her there. He continued reciting the poem from memory as his hands traced her with the aim, it seemed, of memorizing her.

_Wandering in his self from semblance_   
_Toward true flame, he reached a meadow_

(She carded her fingers through his hair and swore she carded them through wheat).

Where _shadows thickened in_  
 _The eyes of virgins as_

(She flickered hers open for only a moment, and when she closed them again the expression on his face danced behind her eyelids).

_Evening at the foot of olive trees;_   
_The branches dripped_   
_A lazy rain of arrows;_

(He waylaid her mouth, sometimes slow, often quick. It occurred to her in that moment that she'd never been properly kissed before).

  
_Here sheep drowsed_   
_Beneath the sleek warmth,_

(Tyrion only lost the composure in his voice here, as he slid his cheek down the slope of her neck and broke pattern, "I thank the gods for your _**neck**_ \--").

  
_Others browsed_   
_Along the gleaming pasture;_   
_The hands of the shepherd were of glass_

(Here his hands moved so slow that Sansa was aware of every inch of territory they took).

  
_Smoothed by faint fever._

“Sansa,” he said. 

“Ah! It’s not over yet, is it?” 

She’d been so caught up in being somewhere else, half in the sound of words and half in what the words were actually saying, half in trying to forget all her other wedding nights and rewrite them with this one, that she was afraid to think the entire thing had passed her by. 

Tyrion burst out laughing. Sansa immediately realized her mistake. No, of course it wasn’t over, they hadn’t even—. She felt a different fever altogether, a very unwelcome redness, flush over her entire body. Oh, she wanted to bury her head in a pillow and die. Tyrion, for his part, seemed on the edge of dying. He rolled off from on top of her and curled into himself, wiping away tears as he tried to suppress his laughter. 

“Adorable,” he whispered, finally. Sansa slapped him on the shoulder. 

“I’m nervous! You’re not the one who’s naked as a newborn,”

“Oh, I don’t think I like that analogy,” he said, groaning with the effort to situate himself. He seemed to consider her words though. In silence, Sansa watched as he thoughtfully pulled his shift over his head. She couldn’t see much of him in the dark. In fact, while he’d been so very near her, she’d forgotten how small he was.

Exquisite, excruciating silence. Tyrion cleared his throat. 

“I was going to say,” he began. He seemed unsure of himself, just sitting there naked beside her. He suddenly crawled between her legs (by instinct, she buckled her knees together) and tabled his arms over her knees and smiled over her long legs.

“I was going to say,” he said again, “Rather, I was going to give you a warning. And, well, um, I’m sorry, I don’[t normally have to do this, and this might just ruin the mood, but, hells! I’ll take all night to seduce you again, but, I needed to warn you—I’ll need to find your entrance, so I’ll have to reach between your legs. Ok? I won’t just barge in,”

Now it was Sansa’s turn to burst out laughing. It felt like all day she’d been waiting to laugh. Tyrion let her, joining in, watching her. When Sansa peered back at him she saw an expression on his face she’d never seen before; even after all the wildness she'd seen play over him in the dark. And the look itself was dark, and wanting, and even noble. A strange mixture. It seemed to erase the scars on his face, the strange colors of his eyes. But it also accentuated them. Without thinking, Sansa leaned forward and kissed the lips that quivered for her in such a strangely appealing way. 

And it began all over again.

This time there were no words, except for those things that Tyrion said that made Sansa shiver, but which afterwards she couldn’t remember what they were. Strange dark throwaways, endearments of the moment, sweet nothings. He gave her a brief warning, first with his voice, then, yes, there were his hands, and yes, it still felt like an invasion. But breath by breath they made it. The pain didn’t last this time. Sansa was relieved at how brief it had been. She watched in wonder as Tyrion became a different man, moving and breathing and taking with the fury of a man, and collapsing into her like he’d just spent himself on sweet victory. She felt sharp little waves of pleasantness, but it would still be some time before she knew what Maergery Tyrell had once called the little death. Even so, her arms wrapped around her husband.

What he did next astonished her. He sleepily disentangled himself from her arms and left the bed. Sansa heard Tyrion rummaging in the dark. He came back with a bowl of water and a soft cloth. He dipped the cloth in the water and, carefully, began washing Sansa’s skin from head to foot. He pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her brow. He hovered there. 

“Thank you,” he said. Then, “Are you alright?” 

She didn’t want to have to say anything. She took his hand and kissed it. 

—

Her husband left her a ream of poetry from Asshai before he left for Highgarden. She read most of the poems three or four times.

When he returned some ten months later, she gave him a son.

“Let’s take him to see the Night Lands,” Sansa told her husband that first night he was back and they lay in each other’s arms, halfway between being friends and lovers, every picture a king and queen, “Let’s tell him how we won the War for the Dawn,”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of the delicious italicized poetry is by Giuseppe Ungaretti:
> 
> "The air is soft" -> from the sequence of the poem "Day by Day"  
> "Along a shore" -> from the poem "The Island"


End file.
